How to improve writing skills? Writing tips

50/50 means that you should spend 50% of your time on the title when writing.
(David Ogilvy, the legendary adman, once changed his title 104 times:)
Principle 2: Repeat principle 1.

Content writing is providing relevant information for products and services on a website. This information comes in different forms such as marketing, newsletters or speeches. The purpose of writing is to help many people know as much as possible about a product before they buy it.

I’ve read many articles that using hot topics, from the way I see, there are some common wrong thinking as follow:

First mistake:

Using hot topics just because they want to use them I believe many authors heard it before, “Hey, XX, this thing is so popular lately, should we use it as well?”I have a friend who has an educational account about studying abroad. A while ago, his boss told him to write somehot topic that has nothing to do with studying abroad, he didn’t know what to do and could only let his imagination runwild, finally came up with an bizarre article.Therefore, this kind of behavior that using hot topics just because they feel like they need to, is not helpful forincreasing their own popularity, the amount of articles sharing and followers at all.

Second Mistakes:

They believe they must chase hot topics timely. Many people believe that they must chase hot topics timely without a doubt. There was a photo about hot topics time on the internet as well. In general, it is believed that the golden period of hot topics is the first hour after they happen, and as for the wasted period, it is the time from 12th hour to 24th hour. First of all, there is nothing wrong with this opinion. From the angle of sharing by ordinary readers and of being interested in hot topics. In the first 6 hours, readers would remain their biggest interests and are willing to receive different views; in the period of 12th hour to 24th hour, they would lose interests because they have received too much information and opinions about the hot topics. But we forgot two issues here: Firstly, it takes a long time to create a hot topic manually. When there is an earthquake, it only takes like 10 seconds to produce a press release by artificial intelligence, and the speed of human beings can never compare to it. It is not easy for anyone to create contents with a strong point and attitude within an hour after it happens. Secondly, it might goes wrong if you chase the hot topics too fast. In this year, the Oscar gave the best film award to La La Land at the ceremony by mistake, when stuff of this movie were giving their acceptance speech, Oscar announced that the award actually belong to Moonlight. By then, a lot of filmed entertainment had already published articles to congratulate La La Land. How awkward it was? Should people delete articles and posters just made?

Third Mistake:

Always take a side and make a loud voice when chasing some hot topic We used to think that it was so easy to follow some hot topics about entertainment news and social news. But after events, people might get a bit scared now. For example, there was an Chinese star who pronounced that he got back together with his ex-wife in September. Not long after, his ex-girlfriend released scandals about this star in social media, and then he tried to fight back, but his ex-girlfriend made a strong move again… Among the subscriptions I am following, these authors made a loud voice about supporting this star and saying he made them to believe in love again in the first place, but made an opposite opinions of judging him as an asshole later. Connect what happened in this event with the time of previous hot topics, we can see that, hot topics events nowadays are too complicated, when you follow it too fast and take a side too obvious, then there might a day to prove you are wrong. So when an account keep posting different articles with inconsistent opinions, how does it convince readers again?

Fourth mistake:

There must be some reversals and smart points Many editors who follow hot points think that, there must be some reversals and smart points so the readers would remember them. So how to create a plot reversal? Choose to create false news or become a sensational headline writer. Hence, in the first two days after some hot topic event happens, you can see every kind of false news spread wildly and all kinds of headlines that are not accordant to the contents, even the readers cannot help to complain about it. If you look at the whole thing from the angle of brand, it is very dangerous to write articles that are not accordant to facts and with logical contradiction, the most direct and simple result would be losing followers. The more serious situation is your account might be blocked. As for showing smart points, everyone knows about it, so there won’t be more details. In short, the tricks of making smart points and reversals ignore one thing, that is, the combination with themselves. They forget the final purpose of chasing hot topics is about advertising themselves and getting more attentions from readers.